Lebanon beats Afghanistan, manages what the US and the USSR could not do.

So here's another exploit to add to Lebanon's long list (from being "the Switzerland of the Middle East" to having had a "Golden age" both fallacies and myths). We beat Afghanistan.

The USSR tried to, the US tried to. Both fled eventually. But us, intrepid Lebanese, there's nothing to daunt us. "Oh so you want Afghanistan beat? Sure, we're the one to do it"... Now before I go on in my veiled talk let me explain what I am speaking of: In the world's happiness index we came in the 136th position, while Afghanistan came 137th. Yes, not much to write home about, but how else to talk about this dismal result.

136th position is before the last in the region, you know Yemen had it much worse than ours this year. And way, way far the crown clinched by Finland - the happiest nation in the world. Little surprise we ended up at the 136th position what's with all the crisis we encounter on a daily basis in Lebanon. The only positive element is that filmmaker Vivek Agnihorti from India suggested that Western nations would come at the bottom (here) if the index was judged upon "how many days they ate with their family and if they can depend on their family for a lifetime".

Sure one can legitimately question certain aspects of the report. Example - in the question if one has given to a charity in the past month - is a notion very "West-centered", in other countries it can be done much differently, a neighbor giving something to another - a dish, a home-made syrup bottle, because what is considered "community" is very different as a notion.

This being said, if Finland wants me to try to convince them about community-building via homemade syrup, you know where to reach me. After all, I come from the proud nation that beat Afghanistan. 

The current Ukrainian crisis showed that some refugees are more equal than others

Source: The Art Of Boo

Moustafa Byoumi wrote a brilliant article in The Guardian lately (please read here) whereby he detailed how "racist" the coverage of Ukraine is. Of course, by now, many of us are familiar with CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D'Agata masterpiece of journalism when he uttered live on air (about Ukraine), that it "isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen" - now of course, when Mesopotamia was a civilization, I am not sure what the rest of the world was.

Let me give you this other story, when trying to save almost extinct species, human beings - when interviewed - wanted to allocate more money towards species with anthropomorphic features. Anthropomorphism is that quality where the animal species has much more "resemblance" to the humans. And even the title of this post is a paraphrasing of George Orwell's "all animals are equal, some more equal than others". I am not directly comparing almost extinct animal species to refugees, but sadly the comparison does stand on the ground.

I have previously detailed the one-sided love between Lebanon and France (please look here). But this is just a small example of how hard it is for a Lebanese to get a visa to Europe. Lebanon has hosted, per capita, the highest amount of Syrian refugees in the world. When Europe was squabbling about a thousand here and there, we had more than 2 million (the latest figures still indicate 1.5 million if you want to know). Even inside Lebanon, the Damour massacre has displaced so many people who still did not go back to their original villages. 

Actually, Christian Lebanese always had this fallacy in their head, that Europe wants them. It would welcome them with open arms. But of course, these are the same people who never tried to apply to a Schengen visa - last time I did it took 60 papers. 60. Papers. I can tell you stories about how embassies treated me (at the time I was teaching at a university, with two full passports filled with stamps and visas and still, they made it incredibly hard to get the visa. Small example: I asked (backed by papers) to get a multiple entry visa. I got one. For how long? 4 weeks! When did finish? One day before Christmas! So it was impossible to actually spend the holidays in Europe even if then I was loaded with money).

But all this to tell you, no - as Lebanese, Syrians, Afghans we are not so welcome to Europe. Of course, just to be clear, considering I grew up in a war, all these sights from Ukraine bother me immensely (and yes, they trigger flashbacks for me). But whereas the whole world rallies around Ukraine (and rightfully so), when all this was happening in Palestine, no one moved a muscle.

Daniel Hannan in The Telegraph put it as succinctly as possible when talking about Ukrainians, "(they) watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts" - you hear that Lebanese "influencers"?

Lebanon: 9/11 twenty years later

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly (Manhattan Mon Amour)

I have no idea where the French embassy is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In 2003, the company driver knew. He took my passport along with two photographs the art director in the cubicle next to me took on the white wall of the office. My visa was picked up later, thank you very much. 

If I am relating this incident it is because, thanks (or rather no thanks) to Ziad Jarrah, one of the 26 terrorists who executed the attacks, for a Lebanese, getting a visa went from difficult to nearly impossible (interestingly, considering the majority of them were Saudi nationals, these visa nightmares did not apply to them). Sure it did not help that the Lebanese, through time and their own silly machinations, built a very bad rap for themselves worldwide (please, don't be silly all denominations included - because I know people will inject in this sentence their own political views. Hint: Maronites in Australia are labelled "wogs" - a very unflattering term if there was ever one. So anyone trying to twist my words, chill). 

Still, if you are a Lebanese in the Gulf, obtaining a visa did not even necessitate you going to the embassy. If you were a Lebanese, in Lebanon, the hurdles to get the said visa were immense. And the difficulties increase by the day. I can spend several posts detailing my embassy/airport misadventures. I have spoken to Saudi nationals, and no, they did not get the same treatment.

All this is a reminder that the consequences of the 9/11 attacks were unevenly spread. In the Western media the talk is about the 2,448 US servicemen who died in Afghanistan. Small reminder, there were also 46,000 Afghan civilian casualties. People, who literally had zero terrorist nationals among the 26 who executed the attack.

Between Lebanon and Aghanistan, Kobi says hello to Chris

1981 United States poster

On May 25th, 2000, the last soldier of Israel’s occupation army, Major Kobi Dostaka of the elite 7th Armored Brigade, jumped down from his Merkava tank and padlocked Gate No. 93 on the border fence after the last tank crossed back into Israel.
On August 30st, 2020, at precisely 11:59 P.M. Kabul time, Maj Gen Chris Donahue commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, steps on board a C-17 transport plane as the last US service member to leave Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Apparently, Maj Gen Donahue told his troops he was "job well done, I'm proud of you all". 

Now, silly as I am I thought it was "Mission Accomplished" already since 2003.

Now all this being said, where does that leave us?

Nowhere to be honest. 

But at least now it is out in the open. By that I mean, anyone with any degree of intelligence would know that all of this was futile. Perhaps I should tell you what happened in 2008 when I was in Sweden following a course on "Journalism and democracy in the Middle East". Back then, we were sharing the premises with a group of Eastern European journalists and they had a Swedish minister visiting them so we were brought along. The woman was really happy that they helped Afghan women vote etc, etc... and this is where I literally blew my top off.

When she finished and it was time for questions I really went for the jugular, my argument that before voting how about... living! And I advocated the case of how women were still forced to marry young, still suffered acid attacks, still were victims of honor killings.

And you know who fought me back later? The women journalists in our own group telling me I cast a bad image about women. In my defense, our moderator (the wonderful Sam Kapadia) came to my side explaining that we were supposed to be 19 journalists not 18, but that our Palestinian colleague was forbidden to travel by her brother.

Where am I leading? I think the whole "hearts and minds" and "women and voting" are too early of victories to be called so. Perhaps everyone caught the snake by the tail. 

And just because there are no rattlesnakes in Afghanistan, this does not mean there are no venomous ones.

Apparently, the Taliban had a saying "you have the watches, we have the time".

And somewhere, someone confused rattlesnakes, watches, and a dash of suffragettes.